Board of Education

Families are welcomed and encouraged to view any Palo Alto Unified School District policies.

Palo Alto Unified maintains current copies of our District policies and administrative regulations in the BoardDocs eGovernance platform.

If you have questions regarding any district policy, please contact your child’s school directly.

Browse Board Policies & Administrative Regulations

Addressing the Board

The Board of Education encourages your participation in its deliberations and has tried to make it convenient for you to express your views to the Board. If you wish to address the Board on an agenda item, please fill out a speaker card and give it to a staff person (seated at a side table) as soon as possible and prior to the item being called.

Any additional materials (e.g. copies of your remarks, charts or graphs, copies of articles, or reports) you present will be copied and presented to all Board members after the meeting. The Board President will randomly call on persons submitting cards.

Should you wish to present a letter for inclusion in the Board packet, it must be received by the Superintendent's Office by noon the Tuesday the week before a Board meeting.

Please indicate that you would like it included in the packet. Correspondence attached to an email and received as noted will be included in the packet; however, email correspondence itself is not included.

General order of regular agenda items

• Staff presentation
• Preliminary Board and staff discussion
• Community participation
• Additional Board deliberation and decision, if appropriate

If you wish to address the Board on an item that is not on the agenda, you may speak during the Open Forum which is scheduled to occur immediately following approval of the Consent Calendar (approximately 6:30-6:45 p.m.).

Board members are legally prohibited from discussing non-agenda items and, therefore, cannot respond to items presented in this venue. (Any additional material you present at a Board meeting will be copied and presented to all Board members after the meeting.)

Because of the short notice often associated with posting special meetings and study sessions, there is no Open Forum at these meetings. The public is welcome, however, to address any item that is posted on agendas for special meetings and study sessions. As these meetings are less formal, the format for discussion may vary slightly from what is presented above.

Board agendas are often very full and time is limited. For that reason, we request that you speak only once on an item and that you limit your remarks either when addressing an agenda item or when speaking in the Open Forum to a maximum of three minutes. If numerous individuals request to speak on a particular item or in the Open Forum, the Board President may limit the total time allocated to each speaker to ensure that all wishing to speak will be heard.

A citizen may place an item on the Board Agenda by submitting a written request and supporting information to the Superintendent's Office. The Superintendent, in consultation with the Board President and Vice President, will determine at which upcoming regular Board meeting the item will be scheduled. The person who requested the item will be allowed three minutes at the meeting to present the information to the Board. Following this presentation the Board may address the issue, put the issue on a future agenda for more discussion and action, refer the issue to the administration for follow-up, or take no action.

Each year the Board of Education members liaise to schools and committees in order to build relationships, hear from staff, students, and families, and to act as a conduit for information to and from the schools, Palo Alto Partners in Education (PiE), and the PTA Council.